Speaking
Talks for people who run things
I speak about what changes for managers when software starts to act and anyone can build an application before lunch. Every talk rests on numbers from a system that runs, and on the failures that came with it.
Topics
Four talks
- Talk 1
Who decides when everyone can build?
AI agents and the power shift in IT. When any department can have an application built in an afternoon, and software carries tasks out instead of proposing them, IT loses its monopoly on building. What remains is the question of who may decide and who answers for the result: for interfaces, data sources, security and the life of the software after its first week.
Works well with the audience: three cases are argued for and against, among them the self-taught builder in a small firm and the digital team in a large one. Also available in German as „Wer entscheidet, wenn alle bauen können?“
- Talk 2
The firm of one: an agentic operating model in numbers
Four AI agents, 28 services, 1.56bn tokens in four weeks and a bill of about €188 a month. What the figures say about cost, tiering and capacity, what they hide, and why the constraint turned out to be the attention of the one person who has to decide.
- Talk 3
Approval by design
In my own setup an agent may draft an email to a customer, but a person sends it. Rights are granted one approval at a time rather than handed over and withdrawn after an accident. A talk about what a human approval buys, what it costs the person who gives it, and why the rules for software belong in the same table as the signing limits for people.
- Talk 4
The firm that forgets
Maintenance departments have long known what happens when knowledge leaves with the person who held it. Language models make the problem general: the labour is stateless, so the memory has to belong to the organisation. Draws on my research on knowledge-based maintenance.
Formats
What I can offer
- Keynote
20 to 40 minutes, with questions. One argument, a handful of numbers, one decision to take home.
- Workshop
About 90 minutes with group work on prepared cases. Best with 15 to 40 participants.
- Panel
As the participant who has both run the system and read the research.
- Briefing
A closed session for a management team or supervisory board, with time for their questions rather than my slides.
Practicalities
Good to know
I speak in German or English. My preferred audience is operations, finance and general management; engineers are welcome, but the talks are not about tools.
I speak in a private capacity and say nothing about my employer’s systems, projects or figures. The numbers come from my own operating model and from published research.
For editors: each essay in The firm of one can be adapted for a trade or management publication, and I keep some material unpublished for outlets that require first publication.
Recent
- October 2026
CIO Kongress, Loipersdorf.
- Ongoing
Guest lectures at TU Wien, Institute of Management Science.
Enquiries
Tell me the audience and the date
A short note is enough: who will be in the room, what they should be able to decide afterwards and how long I have.